DC Offers Zero Issues in September, Launches New Titles

With DC Comics fast approaching the one year anniversary of the launch of the New 52, many have speculated what the publisher would be doing to celebrate. Would every title revert to #1 again? Would they go back to the old continuity? Would they do nothing? None of the above, it turns out. But what they do have in store is quite interesting indeed.

In September, all of the current titles will go on a one month hiatus, instead releasing an issue #0. The zero issues aim to fill in some gaps of history; stuff that occurred before the #1s last September. All of these issues will be stand-alone tales. “Some issues will tell the origins of a character or a team, or in some case where an origin has already been told, they will fill in the blanks in terms of questions readers may have about the New 52 DC Universe,” said Bob Harras, DC Entertainment Editor-in-Chief. “Each of these issues promises to reveal something surprising.”

The zero issues seem to have a dual purpose. One, they appear to be DC responding to some fan response about particular titles that need more explanation in terms of continuity confusion, and two, they provide yet another good jumping on point for new readers. After September, the New 52 books will continue on with their regular numbering. How they’ll be collected remains to be seen; they could just be included in the trades/hardcovers of their respective series, but I wouldn’t doubt a similar omnibus-style collection similar to the DC Comics: The New 52 Hardcover that DC released late last year.

Zero issues are certainly nothing new to comics, but DC isn’t stopping there. Come September, there will be four new titles in their repertoire, all launching with issue #0 and continuing on to #1 in October.

The new titles are as follows:

TALON – Writer: James Tynion IV. Artist: Guillem March. Meet Calvin Rose, the only Talon to ever escape the grasp of the Court of Owls. This former assassin of the Court is trying to live a normal life...but that’s impossible when he’s being hunted by his former masters!

SWORD OF SORCERY – Writer: Christy Marx. Artist: Aaron Lopresti. Featuring the return of Amethyst, Amy Winston leads a strange life on the road with her mother and resents it. She’s about to learn it’s all been necessary when she discovers she’s the lost princess of Gemworld—and she’s being hunted by her murderous aunt. With a back-up story written by Tony Bedard with art by Jesus Saiz, set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the monstrous warrior Beowulf is charged with finding and defeating the evil Grendel.

THE PHANTOM STRANGER - Writer: Dan DiDio. Artist: Brent Anderson Spinning out of his recent appearances in JUSTICE LEAGUE and DC’s Free Comic Book Day story, learn more about the true origin of The Phantom Stranger, his connection to the mysterious Pandora.

TEAM SEVEN - Writer: Justin Jordan. Artist: Jesus Merino Set in the early days of DC Comics-The New 52, threads of the entire DC Universe collide. As Superman emerges, so does the world’s counter measures against him and his kind. Comprised of Dinah Lance, Amanda Waller, Steve Trevor, John Lynch, Alex Fairchild, Cole Cash, Slade Wilson are Team 7—and their story will change everything you know about DC Comics-The New 52.

Last time DC launched new titles – dubbed the Second Wave back in May – they also lost a few of the original relaunch books, keeping the number of series in the DCU proper at 52. This time, however, that’s not the case. When I asked DC about this, they confirmed that they will indeed be publishing more than 52 titles come September. This doesn’t mean nothing will be getting canned – Justice League International has already been rumored to be ending at #12 in August, and Aaron Lopresti joining Sword of Sorcery appears to confirm this -- but it looks like they are no longer holding onto the "52 titles" rule.

The new books are interesting choices to be sure, both in character and creators. One in particular, Justin Jordan, is a new face to the comics industry that made a splash at Image last year with a series we loved here at IGN, The Strange Talent of Luther Strode. We talked with Jordan about his DC Comics debut, the launch of Team Seven, and what he’ll be bringing to the DCU.

IGN Comics: Congrats on the gig man, that must be really exciting for you.

Justin Jordan: Thank you very much, and yeah, it is. It’s awesome.

IGN: Let’s just start simple – can you tell us what Team Seven is about?

Jordan: Basically, in the New DCU after Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, and Superman all become public knowledge, the government is concerned about the run of superhuman threats and develop Team Seven to help deal with them. They’re kind of a “first contact/do something about the problem” team. The basic concept is that the government has taken an interest in trying to get ahead of any kind of superhuman threat before it becomes an issue, so they assemble a fairly covert team to deal with it. That’s not necessarily deal with it in the “we’re gonna shoot ‘em” way, but also to figure out what’s happening and come up with a solution for it.

IGN: Now, the members of the team are from pretty distinctly different walks of life. What’s their dynamic on this team like?

Jordan: It’s interesting. It’s made up of a number of characters from the DCU – not necessarily the same composition of the original Team Seven from the Wildstorm version. We tried to work it out to get different roles for each person on the team, but not everybody gets along with everybody else. They have to learn to work together over the course of the story, but they’ve basically got a lot of people who are really good at what they do. So there’s a lot of fairly big egos involved with it. Over the course of it, we get to see that dynamic evolve and we get to see the effects of what Team Seven has to do and what the experience does to these characters. That’s something that will continue into the present day of the DC Universe. You get to see the reasons why some of the characters act the way they do in their current incarnations.

IGN: That was actually kind of my next question – a lot of the characters involved have their own series running at the moment or they’re prominent players in another book. So I’m curious how else your book plays into the events we’ve seen so far?

Jordan: Well, the Team Seven book is set just after Superman makes his big appearance, so it’s approximately five years in the past of the current DCU. So we’re actually getting to see these characters a while back. But there are several characters that have the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing in the modern books is established over the course of Team Seven. If you want to know why some of the characters are the way they are or want a little insight into their history and the events that shape them, this is the place where you’re going to see a lot of that.

IGN: Is there any character in particular that you’ve attached yourself to, that you’ve found yourself loving to write?

Jordan: Actually, it’s just interesting for me to be writing a team book. That sounds like a non-answer, but most the stuff I’ve written in the past up to and including Luther Strode basically focuses on one person. So writing a team dynamic as a whole is an interesting way to go about things. It’s interesting writing Dinah – Black Canary – she’s proving to be one of the interesting people to write. She and another character are kind of the point-of-view characters for the series. So I’m having a fun time writing that.

IGN: Cool. And you mentioned Luther Stode, which was an uber-violent take on the superhero genre, but I’m curious if any of that – obviously not that extreme – but if any of that kind of brutality would be making its way into Team Seven?

Jordan: It won’t be anywhere near as extreme as Luther Strode, but what we’re trying to do with Team Seven is make sure it’s an action book. I’m going for a big screen, cinematic, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol level of action. But the thing is, these are soldiers, special ops, spies; the nature of the threats they deal with are fairly intense. So yeah, there is going to be some bloodshed. It’s not going to be brains getting punch out of somebody’s head, but one of the core ideas behind Team Seven is that this is taking place where superhumans were not a publicly known thing. So you’re in what is essentially our world, and suddenly you’re finding people that can toss a bus through a building. That’s actually pretty terrifying.

So the nature of these threats that Team Seven are dealing with tend to be fairly extreme; these are scary superhuman people that they’re dealing with. The stuff they do is frightening; it’s not one of those things where you don’t see the collateral damage of a fight. You get a sense of what people with superhuman powers rampaging would actually do to people. That has an effect on the people in Team Seven. They’re all established in the fields, but when you see the stuff that they see, there’s a definite psychological toll. So in the course of the story to reflect that, there’s a fairly high level of violence and consequences. At the same time, it’s not a gore-fest. It’s not anywhere near the levels of extreme that Luther Strode is at. It’s kind of a tricky line to balance. I want people to feel the intensity of the situation without turning it into something that goes beyond what you could sell to a 13-year-old with a good conscience.

IGN: Right. And you’re working with Jesus Merino on this – have you seen his pages yet, and what do you think he brings to the book?

Jordan: I have seen some of his initial work. We’re not too far into the drawing of it at this point, but he’s amazing. I’m really impressed by the work that he’s done and just what he brings to the table. Especially for a guy who honestly, I hadn’t heard of before working on this, which is a real shame because he’s a genuine talent. I hope that this is a breakout book for him, because his art is amazing.

IGN: Having worked on Luther Strode last year, what are the pros and cons of doing a creator-owned book as opposed to something in the DCU?

Jordan: Well, I’ll tell you, the creator-owned thing, especially with Image, is that Image doesn’t get into any editorial stuff on the book. The only suggestion that Image made to us when we were initially pitching the project was that we should get a different letterer, which turned out to be an excellent choice. But at the same time, that means that all of the creative pressure is on me. There’s nobody else but us making decisions about whether something works or doesn’t; you’re all inside your own heads. You have to take a lot on faith because of that; you don’t really have other eyes looking at what you’re doing.

Whereas with DC, I’m working with Eddie Berganza, so I get to bounce things off him and it’s been to the benefit of the book. I have come to appreciate that editing really can add to a book, which not that I didn’t appreciate that before, but coming from a creator-owned background, I just don’t have the experience with it. So there are pros and cons to both in that regard. I mean, at the same time, I am working within the DC Universe so there’s just stuff that I can’t do. I can’t blow up Superman’s head, you know what I mean?

IGN: [laughs] Right, right.

Jordan: I guess from an absolute creativity sense, that might be a con, but it doesn’t bother me. And I think creativity actually thrives under having some restrictions in place to a certain extent. At the same time, it’s nice to be working with established characters and be able to help shape the universe. It’s pretty awesome, actually.

IGN: Great -- that’s all I’ve got for you, is there anything you wanted to add about Team Seven or the zero issues?

Jordan: Our zero issue is going to be an introduction to everybody, and I think it’s very cool. We’re working on it right now; I hope people really enjoy it. I tried to write the best thing that I could.

IGN: Awesome. Justin, it was really nice talking to you – I’m a huge Luther Strode fan, so I’m really excited for you.

Jordan: Thanks Joey, I really appreciate that.

Stay tuned for Team Seven #0 in September, alongside the rest of the New 52 #0s.

Joey is IGN's Comics Editor and a comic book creator himself. Follow Joey on Twitter, or find him on IGN. He thinks having more Steve Trevor around will be glorious.